CASE STUDIES

Juan Torrijo, Head Fitness Coach, Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club: “The Football Squad system has improved the efficiency of our data management. We have also optimised our time by improving the speed and efficiency of individual training load analysis. Other improvements include our inter-departmental communication.”

Client Requirements: The client required an online, performance management solution for the first team and reserve team with the view to implementing this throughout the club’s younger age groups. The client needed a system that would be well structured and easy to use, due to English being the second language of the majority of staff; but a system that still provided the necessary tools required to monitor and enhance the performance of elite football players, competing within the UEFA Champions League. The system would need to cater to the specific requirements of all members of staff including the following departments: Administration, Coaching, Medical, Sports Science, Recruitment, Analysis, Sporting Director, Chief Executive, Players.

Solution and Benefits: The system enables highly effective interaction throughout the football club; facilitating the successful cross-communication between all staff and players. During a 5-day implementation period a Sports Office Client Manager met with each department on multiple occasions to set up the system in the way that worked best for Maccabi and to deliver full training. Now the system is fully functional, key benefits to the Maccabi Tel Aviv staff include:

Manager and Assistant use the system to review, plan and deliver all element of coaching sessions.

The integration of GPS into the system allowing for a greater depth of reporting and load monitoring.

All first team players use the player app to submit monitoring, wellbeing and nutritional information, daily. This has freed an extensive amount of time for the medical and sports science staff, allowing them to be much more time efficient.

The sporting director is heavily involved within the recruitment process of first team and academy players. The system has given him a database that is being utilised by scouts across different continents and then allows him to make informed decisions based on the information collected by his scouts.

The Chief Executive has a live dashboard that allows him to see precisely the KPIs and key information relating to each department.

Streamlined processes throughout the medical team. Injury information, scans, x-rays, tests are logged against individualised player profiles allowing instant reports to be run.

Tony Daley, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Head of Sport Science and Conditioning: “The Sports Office has been a resourceful addition to the day to day running of the sport science department at Wolves. We currently monitor the wellbeing of all players with the information automatically transferred into the system via the players app. Once registered they are assessed and if there any warnings they are acted upon. Such monitoring is key to ensure players are training/playing at their optimum loads and via an easy importing system, key GPS metrics can be instantly analysed (traffic light system) and acted upon relatively.

“Building reports via the Analysis tab is also easy but provides very comprehensive information. The Gym session tab is excellent. Once the session is put onto PMA it allows the players to seamlessly input their own reps and weights via the player app allowing them to be more proactive and provide accurate input of data.”

Client Requirements: Wolverhampton Wanderers required a system to fully incorporate their academy and first team squad. The ability to share Medical and Sport Science data was extremely important for younger players breaking through to the elite squad. Tracking training loads for example when players are interchanging between U21’s and 1st team can be problematic if the whole organisation are using different systems and software. A further requirement for Wolves was the ability for players to quickly and easily complete custom Wellbeing questionnaires, view training schedules and log Gym training loads from prescribed programmes.

Solution and Benefits: The Sports Office worked with Wolverhampton to configure the following functionality:

Custom Dashboards –to show users key metrics and data.

Training loads, Wellbeing and Medical data can now all be quickly accessed on a daily basis to facilitate planning of future training programmes.

Medical and Sports Science Profile – Automatic output page that display current and previous injuries, Training and Game time and testing results against that players average.

Reporting solutions – Data is available regardless of what team a player was playing/training with at the time. This allows for a more accurate reflection of loads on fringe players as well as the ability to track player progression through his time at the club.

Player App – This is now used by the first team and academy to feed data into the custom dashboards. Tony Daley (Head of Sport Science and Conditioning) and his team can now easily view and use the data pushed to them without the need to collect/record it themselves.

Gill Greeves, BHA Vocational Training Manager: “This initiative is a great move forward in our provision of training and development for jockeys who are Racing’s elite athletes. BHA is grateful for the guidance and support offered by The Sports Office in developing this unique system and to the BRS team and Gemma Waterhouse who have managed the project.”

Client Requirements: Creation and implementation of bespoke online Performance Management system for The British Racing School – Jockey Coaching Programme. The programme involves over 200 Apprentice and Conditional Jockeys who receive one-to one or group coaching for up to four hours per month. They also ride in the development events, ‘Racing Excellence Series’. The system is to be used by jockey coaches, jockeys, trainers and administrators of the programme.

Solution and Benefits: The system enables highly-effective interaction between jockeys and coaches for communication, planning and reflection on all coaching and development work. Key benefits include:

Effective management of all jockey information.

Logging and monitoring of all Coaching sessions and related interventions.

Performance reviews for RES races including production of data including leaderboards.

Production of jockey performance stats via API feed from the BHA.

Effective online process for Jockey competency reviews.

Flexible and robust video analysis system to support jockey coaching and development.

David Stevenson, Head of Performance Anaylsis, Scottish Football Association: “The Sports Office is a hugely powerful tool allowing us to quickly and easily manage our key performance processes. It helps us give the best possible preparation.”

Client Requirements: Implementation of a web based performance management system, to help support the development of players aged 11- 16, in the association’s seven national performance schools situated in different regions of Scotland and the national teams programme

Solution and Benefits: The Sports Office football specific system The Football Squad allows Scottish FA coaches to share and deliver their coaching programme between national performance schools. Each player selected by the Scottish FA to attend these schools, receives one hour a day of coaching from a Scottish FA coach. By using The Football Squad to create and store their sessions, the coaches can share session plans and help ensure a consistent approach to programme delivery. Players and staff can access the system from anywhere by logging in on any device or by using the App to:

Create and share Coaching sessions between coaches and with the players.

Player evaluation and self-refection via performance reviews.

Two-way player and coach interaction.

Upload and share video footage to support the development of players, watch and review matches or best practice.

Effective Player information management, administration of contact and personal details.

Make important documents between staff and players available to view and download.

Input testing results to allow national benchmarking and analysis to help with talent identification for national teams.

Daily wellbeing questionnaires completed by players to monitor player welfare and physical condition.

Matt Daniels, St Helens, Head of Strength and Conditioning: “We collect reams of data on our players via daily wellbeing questions, physical marker scores, strength testing, RPEs and GPS. To do this in one central system allows us to collate, monitor and analyse the demands and workloads of our players and to alter training accordingly. The data collected from the strength and conditioning staff supports our medical team who document and record all injuries, notes and fitness tests within the system. This allows us to take objective information to our coaches on the state of players so we can support them to perform at elite level”.

Mike Rush, St Helens, Chief Executive: “The Sports Office rugby-specific system The Rugby Squad has proved an invaluable tool for us. To have one centralized system that has information on all of players from scholarship to first team allows me to see what has happened and what it is going to happen. It allows me to access information away from the training ground and feedback precise and important messages to our owner and board members to maintain and continue to develop elite rugby league players for our club.”

Client Requirements: Club require the capability to capture, monitor and analyse data on players on a daily, seasonal and long term basis.

Solution and Benefits: St Helens Rugby League Club was one of the first to adopt The Sports Office performance management solutions. Over the years they have collected millions of data points on their players, which has proved invaluable in recent times. St Helens make comprehensive use of The Rugby Squad throughout their organisation, including:

The selection and monitoring of players from domestic teams and clubs for the national sides is a complex and time consuming process. It involves a wide number of people across a variety of departments.

Information also needs to be communicated back to the players’ clubs and the staff within these organisations.

The Sports Office was selected to help in the two-way communication between the national or representative side’s management and a player’s parent club, with particular emphasis on the medical status of each athlete. A quicker, more streamlined system has helped to monitor player wellbeing and injury, making considerable savings in time and money.

Asking players to concentrate for long periods in a video analysis room is always an issue for coaches and finding the time to show specific videos to individual players can be even more difficult.

Thanks to The Sports Office the club is now able to stream both team and individual videos, which allows the players to view these at their leisure.

Furthermore, videos are now accessible on personal mobile platforms which means players can watch them on the move whether travelling to games, in the changing rooms or wherever and whenever they see fit

Gathering information from professional rugby players, particularly on a daily basis can be problematic. The data can become irrelevant by the time it is processed.

By using The Sports Office mobile application rugby clubs have found that their players are more willing to co-operate with data gathering, predominantly the completion of ‘well being questionnaires’.

Many have found that player completion of such daily questions has increased by over 25% as the players now provide their answers using their mobile devices.

With the data gathering process now ‘live’, coaches, sports scientists and medics have been able to implement and adapt training specifically to players needs immediately upon receiving the information.